WE’RE PLEASED to report that Baltic Features has a new home, in the landmark building above, located on the Pardaugava side of Akmens bridge.

The salmon-pink edifice is one of the most instantly recognisable in Riga and is currently undergoing a full restoration.

However, BF didn’t want to wait until the lift was working and everything was plugged in, so we’re there already, at Kugu iela 11, office 504 to be precise.

There are several reasons why we a chose this location. For a start, we are firm believers in Pardaugava, the ‘wrong’ side of the river. It’s where we choose to live, and now it’s where we choose to work. Most visitors to Riga simply pass through it on their way to the Old Town, but we’re of the opinion that much of the creative energy Riga has to offer these days is on the Pardaugava side of town.

We also wanted to support a sympathetic restoration of a great old building, albeit in a very small way. There are some very swish new office spaces around Riga at the moment, but we wanted to provide a reminder that there are also plenty of outstanding older buildings that could do just as well, given a bit of investment.

And finally, we’re just a walk across the bridge away from where most of the press activity in town happens. In fact we spent a good few minutes this week looking out of the window watching the arrival of motorcades for the micro-summit between the Baltic and Polish presidents. We can confirm that Lech Kaczynski’s is the quickest.
Next week we’ll witness even more arrivals when prime ministers from around the Baltic Sea arrive for another summit. The official line is that PM Putin of Russia won’t be putting in an appearance. However, from our eyrie yesterday we spotted what looked suspiciously like a group of Russian diplomatic bodyguards walking the streets of Riga and noting lines of sight, so it’s even money that he may put in a surprise showing.

In case you do happen to be passing, Mr Putin, we’d be delighted if you dropped in for a cup of tea and slice of cake. That invitation extends to the rest of you as well, though if you’re not in charge of a superpower, we probably won’t offer a second slice…

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 10:37 am and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.